I’ll tell you a story ‘bout a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer but he kept his family fed.

Then one day he was hunting for some food when up from the ground came a’bubblin’ crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.

I can guarantee that several Barnsley Chronicle readers are now singing those words, those glorious words. And I bet a few of those people have now moved on to the second verse.

The next thing you know old Jed’s a millionaire. His kinfolk said ‘Jed move away from there’ said ‘California’s the place you oughtta be’ so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverley. Hills, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars…

Yes, that’s the theme song, by Flatt and Scruggs, to the wonderful old TV series The Beverley Hillbillies and it’s one of those theme songs that I know off by heart because I watched it so often.

Oddly, though, I sang it to my mate Iain the Artist the other day and he looked blankly at me. The reason for that is that I’m nearly 70 and he’s about ten years younger than me and I may as well have been singing a piece of 13th century Gregorian plainchant as far as he was concerned.

That got me thinking about the way that the theme songs of the shows we loved as kids soak into our lives so powerfully that we can quote them decades later and they still make us happy and we can often recall exactly which settee we were sitting on when we used to hear them and we used to watch the show.

Or, in the case of the Dr Who theme tune, the settee we used to hide behind when we were watching the show.

A horse is a horse of course, of course, but no-one can talk to a horse of course unless of course it is the horse that’s the famous Mr Ed.

Yes, sing along if you remember it. I tell my grandkids that I used to be enthralled by a black-and-white show about a horse that could talk and they look at me ‘gone art’ as they say round here but that theme song heralded many a teatime of joy and excitement.

And the song was written by a songwriting team called Jay Livingston and Ray Evans and no, I’ve never heard of them either. Yet, between them, they wrote a song that is as important to me as any by The Beatles or The Rolling Stones or The Clash.

London Calling? Yes, great song but not a patch on Mr Ed. Looking into Jay and Ray’s songbook, mind you, I learned that they also wrote that Christmas favourite Silver Bells, one of my dad’s favourites Buttons and Bows and that old romantic song Mona Lisa.

I bet they’d rather be remembered (or half-forgotten) for them than for Mr Ed but hey, that’s showbiz.

There were other shows that I watched endlessly as a child whose theme songs I can only remember fragments of? Gilligan’s Isle: does anybody in the borough recall that programme, about some Robinson Crusoe-style castaways but the only bit of the song I can bring to mind is the line ‘here on Gilligan’s Isle’.

I just sang it. Did you hear me? Then there was My Mother the Car about a bloke whose late mother was reincarnated as, in the only bit of the song I can sing, ‘a 1928 Porter, that’s my mother dear, cos she helps me through everything I do and I’m so glad she’s here’.

The only person I’ve ever met who can sing the whole of that song is my mate Dave from Hull who is just a year older than me and whenever we meet he tries to teach it me.

These songs echo through our lives and remind us of the places we’ve been and the people we used to know.

And of course I mentioned Robinson Crusoe earlier and nobody who was little when that show was on can ever forget the haunting music that ran through it, especially the vastly emotional opening tune.

There are no words, but let’s just sing it, shall we? All together now, but only if you’re of a certain age… ‘Dar dar dar dar dar, dar dar dar dar dar dee dar dar dar…’

Folks from Sheffield love that song!